Court junks Andal Sr.’s motion to quash

The Court of Appeals has completely shut the door on former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr.’s bid to be excluded from the list of respondents in the multiple murder case in connection with the Maguindanao massacre case.

In a resolution dated July 21, the appellate court junked with finality Ampatuan’s petition seeking a reversal of its Jan. 31 ruling which upheld the order of the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicting him in the gruesome killing of 57 people in his province on Nov. 23, 2009.

“We found no grave abuse of discretion… when the DOJ found that there exist some facts and circumstances that engender a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed, and that petitioner is probably guilty of that crime and should be held for trial,” the appellate court said in an eight-page order.

The resolution was written by Associate Justice Noel Tijam, with Associate Justices Antonio Villamor and Amy Lazaro-Javier concurring in.

In throwing out Ampatuan’s motion, the court said it did not rule in favor of the prosecution panel “certainly not because of the magnitude of the controversy that has hounded this case since day one.”

It said it also did not give weight to the “worldwide media attention” that the case generated being “the bloodiest single (violent) incident in the history of the Philippines.”

“We only hold that he should be held for trial due to the DOJ’s finding of probable cause,” the appellate court said.

“Although we scoured the records anew for the purpose of resolving the instant motion, we found no compelling reason to deviate from our earlier findings,” it added.